


Simple

by miloron (ocoa)



Series: Ocoa more like oh no it's Produce 101 [5]
Category: NU'EST, Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: :-), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 17:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11811120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocoa/pseuds/miloron
Summary: Kahi and Jonghyun.





	Simple

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up with plot suggestions or anything at my [askFM page](https://ask.fm/bugiron) hoho

Kahi meets Kim Jonghyun when he is young and small and barely holding together, struggling with the pain of training and loneliness. The boy is quiet, a country boy, and she smiles at his simple outlook of life, wondering if she too was once so innocent. Probably not, Jonghyun was always uniquely himself.

She teaches him how to dance and rap, to put his all, to sharpen the angles of his elbows and the consonants of his words, to feel the song and capture it as his own, and she watches with pride when he grows by leaps and bounds. It gets to the point even the CEO would come in sometimes to watch, his eyes calculating a number on the boy.

She wants to protect him, but even she can't change how the industry works.

Choi Minki comes a year later, and with him, Kang Dongho, Hwang Minhyun and Aaron Kwak. Jonghyun is happier, she thinks, and she becomes too busy to watch him most days but when she does she sees something change. He breaks out of his shell, becomes wiser, stronger. He's firm but kind, gentle but knows when to crack down. She sees him shout at Dongho to have him move faster to the beat, then praise him when he gets the step right.

It was then she knows, as much as CEO Han who observes quietly, that Kim Jonghyun was made to be a leader.

The five boys become Nu'est.

They don't do well.

She finds him alone in the training rooms, curled into himself, small and crying. She holds him together and tries not to break with him. When he looks at her, he stopped crying, but his eyes are dark and dimmed like midnight had descended on them. The words he says hurts her because he doesn't deserve to ever think that he was not good enough, that he had let anyone down.

They hurt, because she knows. She knows how hard they work, the tears, the blood, the sweat, the strain of being idols, and yet Jonghyun doesn't ever lose the pure, innocent yet manic love for the stage and performance. He's never deserved this, and neither did the other boys, which causes her to tear up when she sees him in front of her, a "trainee" of nearly 10 years, the most experienced in the whole competition.

She cries, and it takes her everything to mark them to their standard. She thinks she expects too much when they give the grades, but Jonghyun looks at her and she is struck, before she smiles.

If his look is anything to go by, they can take it.

The competition hurts in more ways than one. She sees her boy grow even more, gaining followers in his fellow trainees, seeing the glow in his eyes gleam so bright she wonders if they were ever as dim as she's seen that night in the training rooms, but she knows better. It's only the darkness that makes the shine in his eyes all the more bright.

When he gets 14, all she can think is not him, not her boy, _not her boy again_.

He finds her after the show, and wipes the tears from her eyes. "Minhyunnie, Nayoung, Cheol and Kahi-noona are too emotional," he says laughing. "I'm okay noona."

Then his hands hold her, and she can feel his hands shake so she pulls him into an embrace. "I'm so proud of you," she says, running a hand through his hair multiple times. "I'm so proud of you."

If Jonghyun cries a bit after that, neither of them says a thing, and he covers it up quickly. His words are quiet when he pulls away, but the smile on his face stretches from ear to ear.

"Thank you noona for the past 8 years."

She smiles back, unable to restrain her pride of the son she managed to raise before Noah all grown up and making his own legacy, if the shock she sees from the crowd and the trainees themselves is any indication.

She knows Kim Jonghyun.

She knows he'll succeed.


End file.
